Trichy: Frustrated over the delay in repairing the road in the city that was damaged in the recent rains, the Trichy traffic police on Sunday volunteered to fill the potholes on arterial roads. The community-friendly measure received support from the locals who joined the drive by filling and levelling the potholes with soil and construction debris.
The police team headed by inspector N Navukkarasu filled numerous potholes on the road that links Srirangam with Chathiram bus stand at Melachinthamani near Anna statue. Similarly, potholes on Karur Road near Kamarajar statue were filled. Stating they had earlier regulated traffic on bad roads by placing barricades before the potholes, Navukkarasu said at one point there were too many barricades on the stretch, hindering mobility.
“The roads cause frequent traffic bottlenecks as they were used by mofussil and city buses. We were forced to repair the roads on our own as the bad roads were ignored by the authorities,” Navukkarasu said. On Sunday morning, as the police inspector accompanied by constables were filling the potholes on Anna Nagar main road near Science park, a few residents joined in and helped with tools including spades, police said. Even heavy machinery was provided by good Samaritans to level the roads.
“We tried to fill the potholes on Sasthri Road, but there were too many potholes on the stretch. As it would take a day, we skipped repairing that stretch,” he added.
On noticing the traffic police repairing the roads, both the state highways department and Trichy Corporation have planned to repair the damaged roads on Monday.